Paperback 758: Beyond Eden / David Duncan (Ballantine 102)

Paperback 758: Ballantine Books 102 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Beyond Eden
Author: David Duncan
Cover artist: Richard Powers

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "I see the source of life itself—there! Beyond Eden. Eden … hey Eden … *EDEN*, would you get your giant body out of the way so we can see the damned source of life itself!?" 
• Eden looks like giant space actress who has forgotten her line.
• Richard Powers is the king of interplanetary fever dreams and wackadoodle future machines. My favorite scifi/fantasy cover artist (even if this isn't exactly his best work) (with respect to Valigursky, Emshwiller, etc.).

Best things about this back cover:

• Living Water ™ —part of the Coca-Cola family of horror beverages
• Excellent back cover art by somebody's 13-month-old niece.
• If the "man" and the "woman" had names, this cover might be milligrams sexier.

Page 123~

Spectralium grew rapidly in Gayley's pilot tank.

That is some grade-A space porn right there.

~RP

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Paperback 635: The Time Tunnel / Murray Leinster (Pyramid R-1522)

Paperback 635: Pyramid R-1522 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: The Time Tunnel
Author: Murray Leinster
Cover artist: Jack Gaughan

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Y'know ... it's pretty standard TV tie-in fair. Network logo. TV title font. A tunnel (presumably of the "time" variety).
• I actually love the tunnel. Diminishing people descending into diminishing non-concentric circles. Simple and cool.
• Wikipedia tells me that Murray Leinster wrote a novel with this title in 1964, the plot of which was quite different. He then wrote this novelization of the TV series three years later, and then a later, final "Time Tunnel" novel called Timeslip: Time Tunnel Adventure #2. There were also two "Time Tunnel" Gold Key comics put out in '66-'67.
• Complete TV series is on Hulu Plus. I'm gonna check it out.

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa, the "real" tunnel is an op-art nightmare.
• The Scientist Wore Shapeless Chinos (That Made His Ass Look Fat and Flat).
• Who could forget James Darren and Robert Colbert!? (A: everyone)
• "And it's produced by Irwin Allen, so you know it's top-of-the-line TV fare."—something someone somewhere must've thought at some time.

Page 123~

"I'm talking about the time traveller Kirk's assembled," said Doug urgently. "In the Tunnel chamber!" He said apprehensively: "We may be stuck here for always! Tony! The whole Project may turn out a failure!"

Tony roused. 

As terse, momentous sentences go, "Tony roused" is up there with "Jesus wept."

~RP

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Paperback 493: Atoms and Evil / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal s1231)

Paperback 493: Gold Medal s1231 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Atoms and Evil
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: Uncredited [Richard Powers?]

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• I like how the title functions like a form-fitting dress on ... whatever that one-eyed creature waving its arms at us is. Now put an all-text dress on your average paperback cover girl, and you've got something.
• There was probably a time when the title "Atoms and Evil" was evocative of ... something. Considering "atoms" are just the basic building blocks of, well, everything, the title doesn't have quite the situation-specific punch it oughta.
• Is crazy multi-armed cyclops supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic approximation of a mushroom cloud. More like a tree-trunk cloud.

Best things about this back cover:

• Acrostic time!
• OMG I *love* love love the test tube motif on the left. Brilliant design feature.
• "Prefontal robotomy!" Rich.
• If I had to read only two of these, I'd go with Vorm and Mr. Goofy, hands-down.

Page 123~

"I don't really want the world to revert to neurotic or psychotic behavior just so I can have a practice. But damn it, I can't stand to see the way things are going. We've done away with stress and privation and tension and superstition and intolerance, and that's great. But we've also done away with ourselves in the process. We're getting to the point where we, as human beings, no longer have a function to perform. We're not needed."

Anson's right. Futuristic dystopias are for the 'bots.

~RP

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Paperback 371: The Love Clinic / Gil Hara (Softcover Library S95277)

Paperback 371: Softcover Library S95277 (PBO, 1966)

Title: The Love Clinic
Author: Gil Hara
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Her eyeshadow. Dang.
• Why can't I get Neil Sedaka's "Having My Baby" out of my head!?!?
• "You know ... *those* girls. What's up with them?"
• One of scads of Kinsey-inspired softcore paperback offerings that populated racks in the '50s and '60s, although this one is more about labs studying the physiology of sex than surveys studying the sexual habits of a population. Whatever, the "how can it be science when it turns me on?" issue still applies.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh. Text.
• This book goes from mere description ("...girls are observed during climax") to judgmental sensationalism ("...men bare perverse lusts") without even blinking.
• And, once again, we lead with rape. Yeesh.
• "These volunteers must really be perverted, right? Right? Can you believe the shamelessness of these perverts? You better buy this book and furtively peep into their lives while you masturbate ... because that is *not* perverted. Not at all."
• I love how this book barely ever indicates that it's fiction (I think "novel" is the only word, front or back, that signals fiction). Nothing on the front cover suggests "fiction." Even the photo cover suggests a documentary approach.

Page 123~

She used to think it worthwhile to serve such a brilliant man. But now he was methodically tearing the clothes off her.

~RP

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Paperback 256: About the Kinsey Report / eds. Donald Porter Geddes and Enid Curie (Signet 675)

Paperback 256: Signet 675 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: About the Kinsey Report: Observations by 11 Experts on "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male"
Authors: various
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "Sexual Behavior in Male Mannequins with Irregular Heartbeats"
• This is pretty much as dull as these covers get. This book is impt from a historical standpoint, but not from an aesthetic one. "jonas" is a great early cover artist. Lots of great stylized, abstract covers from him on Penguin and Signet books in particular. This cover doesn't do him justice.
• The Kinsey Report was a boon for sellers of trashy fiction because they could (and did, in spades) use the data about unconventional (e.g. non-heterosexual, non-reproductive) sexuality from Kinsey's studies to justify and hype their books under the guise of the public's right to exercise its scientific curiosity. We'll see hilarious examples of this kind of self-serving cover copy many times in future installments of this blog.

Best things about this back cover:

• Small text! Who doesn't love that!?
• Signet is testing the waters here, waiting to see if their readers do indeed have "fair and open minds." Hence the very boring, scientific-looking, toned-down cover (and cover copy — you don't even see the words "masturbation" or "homosexuality," for instance). The U.S. mass-market paperback doesn't take a serious, overtly sexual turn for another few years, but once Gold Medal comes along with its sensational paperback originals and saucy covers, the heat starts to go up, and by 1960, it's a sexual free-for-all (see Paperbacks 252 and 253, among others).

Page 123~

It is not good to find masturbation continuing as a heavy factor in the sex outlet of married men among the better educated group.

I ... uh ... what?

~RP